From Law Firm Partner to General Counsel: How to Succeed in Your First In-House Role
Transitioning from law firm partner to General Counsel exciting, but it's a completely different game. While it's becoming increasingly common, it still represents a significant shift in mindset, responsibility, and day-to-day reality. The first few months in the GC chair can be both invigorating and overwhelming.
So how do you prepare for the transition, and more importantly, how do you hit the ground running once you get there?
Making the Move: Reframing Your Credentials
Before you can thrive in the role, you need to land it. Law firm partners looking to become GCs should focus on three things:
1. Shift Your Narrative
Frame yourself as a business partner, not just a technical lawyer. Talk about how you’ve enabled clients to grow, de-risked major ventures, or advised on issues beyond your practice area.
2. Broaden Your Appeal
If your experience has been highly specialised, show how you've led multi-disciplinary matters or collaborated across legal teams. GCs need to see the big picture and handle everything from governance to employment to commercial risk.
3. Think Like a Leader
Highlight your leadership experience, running teams, mentoring juniors, managing budgets, sitting on committees. These are the skills that translate to leading an in-house legal function.
Once You’re In: Succeeding in the GC Seat
Landing the GC role is the start, not the finish line. Your success will be defined not by your legal brilliance, but by how well you adapt, influence, and integrate into the business. Here’s how to make a strong start.
1. Get to Know the Business—Fast
Deep dive into how the company makes money, loses money, and measures success. Your first 30–60 days should be spent listening, observing, and asking questions. Join commercial meetings. Visit operational sites. Build a map of who the key decision-makers are and how they interact.
You are no longer an external adviser dropping in—you are part of the engine room now.
2. Build Trust with Senior Stakeholders
Your CEO, CFO, and business unit heads will be your most important relationships. Set up one-on-ones early, understand what legal issues keep them up at night, and learn their priorities.
Avoid long legal memos, speak their language. Demonstrate pragmatism, commercial judgment, and an understanding of risk tolerance. Show that you’re there to enable the business, not slow it down.
3. Assess (and Win Over) the Legal Team
If you inherit a legal team, listen before you lead. Understand the structure, individual strengths, pain points, and reputation of legal within the business. Acknowledge what's working well and where you see opportunities for growth or development.
If there is no existing team, start identifying gaps and areas where hiring or external support will be necessary. Either way, your leadership style and approach will set the tone from day one.
4. Prioritise and Deliver Early Wins
You can’t do everything at once, so pick two or three areas to make an immediate impact. That might mean streamlining contract turnaround times, resolving a nagging compliance issue, or improving legal reporting to the board.
Early wins show the business you’re decisive, solutions-oriented, and aligned with commercial needs.
5. Establish Clear Legal Processes
Most companies don't need more complexity, they need clarity. Introduce simple processes for common workflows (NDAs, commercial contracts, regulatory queries). Set up escalation paths and make it easy for the business to engage with legal.
Automate where possible, and don’t be afraid to challenge legacy ways of working that no longer make sense.
6. Be a Strategic Operator, Not Just a Legal Gatekeeper
Genuinely successful GCs are seen as part of the executive leadership, contributing to business decisions, not just legal ones. Stay close to strategy, attend leadership offsites, and position yourself as someone who understands both legal and commercial levers.
Get comfortable weighing risk, rather than eliminating it. Your job is not to say “no” - it's to find workable paths forward.
Final Thoughts
The move from partner to General Counsel isn’t just a change of environment, it’s a transformation in identity. You’re no longer a specialist, a biller, or an adviser. You’re a leader, a business partner, and a key part of the company’s future.
Prepare thoughtfully, transition strategically, and focus on adding value from day one. If you do, you’ll find the GC role offers something law firms rarely can: a front-row seat to how businesses are built, and a chance to help shape their success.